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ANSERMET Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande (Met Opera, 1962) - PACO151

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Extended Sleeve Notes

Full Cast Listing

Cover Art

First Night Review

Performances of Claude Debussy’s only opera Pelléas et Mélisande
at the Metropolitan Opera have been almost as elusive as the frail,
mysterious Mélisande herself. Since its first Met performance on 21 March
1925, just a mere 23 years after its world premiere, the opera has only
been performed 114 times to date. That’s a total of 93 years. To put that
into context using the ABCs of the opera world, Aïda, La Bohème and Carmen, each reached
their 114th performances 21, 12 and 15 years after their first performances
at the Met, respectively.

Admittedly, Pelléas et Mélisande doesn’t have the grand choruses
and spectacle of Aïda, the blossoming love of two young Bohemians
on Christmas Eve in the Latin Quarter of Paris of La Bohème or the endless tunes of Carmen that audiences flock to
see and hear year after year. But what it does have, an ethereal, almost
time-evasive quality, is what makes the work so individual and special.

Interestingly, the work was immensely popular in New York from its first
performance on 19 February 1908, barely six years after its world premiere
at the Opéra-Comique on 30 April 1902. It was presented by the only company
to give the Metropolitan Opera its only real competition during this time,
the Manhattan Opera Company, run by Oscar Hammerstein l. Where Met General
Manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza was able to offer the public truly grand opera
with some of the greatest singers of the time (Farrar, Sembrich, Homer,
Caruso, Scotti, and Chaliapin, to name just a very few), Hammerstein and
the Manhattan Opera Company drew its audiences with its own pool of great
singers, but more significantly, somewhat more adventurous repertory,
particularly with the French works that the Met was not programming, Pelléas et Mélisande, Louise and the many operas of Jules
Massenet, among them.

No doubt, one of the reasons for the success of these early New York
performances of Pelléas et Mélisande was the presence of the
Mélisande of the world premiere, Mary Garden. It should also be noted that
Hammerstein was able to secure the services of the first Pelléas, Jean
Périer, Golaud, Hector Dufranne and Geneviève, Jeanne Gerville-Réache, as
well for these initial performances. Cleofonte Campanini was the conductor.
But it was undoubtably Garden herself, who was known not only for her
voice, but for her exceptional acting, that kept the opera in front of the
public.

When the work finally arrived at the Met in 1925, it had its own
star-studded cast, including Lucrezia Bori (wearing costumes specifically
designed for her by the great Russian artist, Erté), Edward Johnson (who
studied the role with the roles originator, Jean Périer and who would
eventually become General Manager of the Met in 1935), Clarence Whitehill,
Léon Rothier and Kathleen Howard. Louis Hasselmans conducted. The opera was
performed 32 times in 11 consecutive seasons and has been in and out of the
repertory sporadically ever since.

The first broadcast of the opera took place on 21 January 1933 and
presented only Acts Two and Three. It featured the Met’s first Mélisande,
Pelléas, Arkel and conductor (Bori, Johnson, Rothier and Hasselmans), as
well as Ezio Pinza as Golaud, a recording sadly lost to us. Fortunately,
the following season’s broadcast of 7 April 1934 from the Met on tour in
Boston exists complete and also features Bori, Johnson, Pinza, Rothier and
Hasselmans, but, as would be expected, is in very poor sound.

The timing of this release could not be more appropriate as we acknowledge
the centenary of Debussy’s death. The 29 December 1962 broadcast presented
here was only the sixth broadcast of the opera and features an equally
illustrious cast in the presence of Anna Moffo, Nicolai Gedda, George
London, Jerome Hines, Blanche Thebom and a young Teresa Stratas who would
herself become one of the great Mélisande’s of our generation. In the pit
was the eminent Swiss maestro, Ernest Ansermet, in what was to be his only
season at the Met and this, in fact, is his last performance with the
company and his only Met broadcast. This broadcast also provides us with
the only opportunity to hear Moffo and Gedda as the protagonists and Thebom
as Geneviève. The next time we hear Stratas in the opera it will be as
Mélisande. Another interesting aspect of this broadcast is that Ansermet
opens a small cut in Act Four thereby allowing us to hear for the first
time on a broadcast of the opera a short scene for Yniold. After this
broadcast, it would be a little over nine years before the radio audience
would hear the opera again.

This release also includes two very special bonus features. Prior to the
start of the performance, Ernest Ansermet spoke briefly to the radio
audience about the musical aspects of the opera. Then during the first
intermission, Opera News on the Air presented an in-depth interview with
our Maestro hosted by Edward Downes.

In the New York Times review published on 1 December 1962 of the first
performance of the run (which featured Theodor Uppman as Pelléas; Gedda
would take over at the third of the five performances that season), Harold
C. Schoenberg concluded his review with these words:
On the whole, then, a fine performance of the exquisite, gossamer tonal
world that makes up “Pelléas et Mélisande.” With Mr. Ansermet holding
it together with such suppleness, and with so reliable a cast, the
opera could not help but make an impact. “Impact” might not be the
right word, “Pelléas et Mélisande” being the crepuscular thing it is,
but for several hours last night at the Metropolitan Opera was the
realm of a magic, subdued, dim-lit empire.

Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s
play of the same name. Debussy himself set the text to music. The work
revolves around the mysterious young Mélisande, who Golaud finds lost in a
forest while hunting. She reveals only her name to him but nothing of her
origins. Six months pass and we learn that Mélisande and Golaud have
married. They eventually return to the castle of his grandfather, the aged
King Arkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande meets Golaud’s younger
half-brother, Pelléas. They become increasing attached to each other,
arousing Golaud’s jealousy. He tells Pelléas that Mélisande is pregnant and
that he should avoid contact with her. But as Golaud’s suspicions between
the two deepens, he begins to go to extreme lengths to discover the extent
of the relationship between them. He forces his own son from a previous
marriage, Yniold, to spy on the couple and even goes so far as to become
physically violent with Mélisande. Pelléas tells Mélisande that he has
decided to leave the castle but they arrange a final meeting where they
confess their love for each other. Golaud, who has been spying on them,
rushes forward and kills his half-brother. Mélisande lies ill in bed having
given birth to a daughter. Alone with her, Golaud presses her to confess
her love for Pelléas, but she maintains her innocence to his dismay. Arkel
brings the meeting to an end as Mélisande quietly dies. Arkel tells the
distraught Golaud that it is now the child’s turn to live.

Anna Moffo (27 June 1932 - 9 March 2006), our Mélisande, was born in Wayne,
Pennsylvania. Turning down an offer to go to Hollywood, Moffo studied at
the Curtis School of Music in Philadelphia. After winning a Fulbright
Scholarship in 1954, she travelled to Italy to study and quickly
established herself through appearances on RAI Television. She returned to
the United States and made her American debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago
in 1957. She made her Met debut on 14 November 1959 in what was her most
famous role, Violetta in La Traviata, which she sang 80 times
during her Met career. Her full lyric soprano voice and easy vocal agility
allowed her to encompass a wide variety of 21 different roles during her 17
years with the company. She returned to the Met for one final appearance at
the Centennial Gala in 1983. These were her only performances of Mélisande
at the Met.

Our Pelléas, Swedish tenor Nicolai Gedda (11 July 1925 - 8 January 2017),
was one of the most versatile tenors of our generation. His superlative
linguistic abilities allowed him to sing in at least seven different
languages. In addition to his beautiful, evenly produced voice, with its
easy upper extension, he possessed flawless legato and diction. With a
career spanning over an astonishing 50 years, Gedda sang 367 performances
of 28 operas during his 25 seasons at the Met, including the World Premiere
of Barber’s Vanessa in 1958 and the United States Premiere of
Menotti’s The Last Savage in 1964. In 1972, he sang Gherman in the
first-ever Met performances of The Queen of Spades in its original
language, the first time a Russian opera was performed in the vernacular.
His repertory ranged from the classical operas of Gluck and Mozart to the
bel canto works of Donizetti and Bellini, as well as Verdi, Puccini,
Strauss (Johann and Richard) and Smetana and he excelled in the French
repertory of Gounod, Bizet, Offenbach, Massenet and Debussy, as we can hear
on this broadcast. Like Anna Moffo, these were his only performances of the
opera at the Met.

Golaud is portrayed by the great singing actor bass-baritone George London
(30 May 1920 - 24 March 1985). Born in Montréal, Canada, London was only 25
when called upon by conductor Antal Doráti to make his professional debut.
Within a few years he was engaged by the Vienna State Opera and his career
was established. Famous for his Wagnerian roles, he was chosen to sing
Amfortas in the first post-war production of Parsifal at the
Bayreuth Festival in 1951. Later that year, on 13 November, he made his
Metropolitan Opera debut as Amonasro in a New Production of Aïda
on Opening Night of the 1951-52 Season. One of the highlights of his career
was the honor of becoming the first North American artist to sing the title
role of Boris Godunov at the Bolshoi Opera during the Cold War in
1960. Despite being diagnosed with a paralyzed vocal cord in the early
1960s that brought his career to an early end, London still performed over
250 times in 18 different operas during his 15 seasons with the Met. During
this time, he sang in two United States premieres, Arabella in
1955 and The Last Savage in 1964.

Pennsylvania born Mezzo-Soprano Blanche Thebom, our Geneviève, (19
September 1915 - 23 March 2010) is perhaps best remembered for performance
of Brangäne in the now-historic first complete studio recording of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde staring Kirsten Flagstad and conducted by
Wilhelm Furtwängler released by EMI in 1952 (PACO067). It was also the role
of her Metropolitan Opera debut on 28 November 1944. While particularly
well-known for her roles in the Wagnerian repertory (Tristan und Isolde, Das Rheingold, Die Walküre, Götterdämmerung, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg) it was the role of Amneris in Aïda (her 1953 Met broadcast of the opera is available on
PACO147), which she performed 80 times between 1946 and 1959, that she
would sing more than any other during her 23-year Met career. She took part
in two Met premieres, The Rake’s Progress in 1953 and Arabella in 1955. Her final performance at the Met was as the
Countess in The Queen of Spades during the first season at the New
Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1967.

Our Yniold, Canadian soprano Teresa Stratas (born 26 May 1938), was only 21
years old when she made her Met debut on 28 October 1959 as Pousette in Manon after winning the Metropolitan Opera National Council
Auditions earlier that year. Her Met career spanned 35 years during which
time she performed 385 times in 39 roles in 35 operas. Like her colleagues
on this broadcast, Nicolai Gedda and George London, she also sang in the
United States Premiere of The Last Savage in 1964 as well as
performing the title role in what was arguably her greatest triumph, Lulu, in the Met Premiere of the complete three act version of the
opera. Known for her intensely dramatic portrayals of some of the most
complex operatic characters, she created the role of Marie Antoinette in
the World Premiere of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles
in 1991. As luck would have it, her final Met performance was a broadcast
in which she sang Jenny in Kurt Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny on 9 December 1995.

As impressive as all of the above statistics are, it is our Arkel,
California-born bass Jerome Hines (8 November 1921 - 4 February 2003), who
boasts the record number of performances among his colleagues in this
broadcast: 869 performances in 45 roles in 39 operas over the course of his
41 seasons with the Met. His debut took place on 21 November 1946 as The
Officer in Boris Godunov, an opera that he would perform no less
than three different roles in during his career at the Met. He added Pimen
in 1953 and the title role in 1954, becoming the first US-born singer to
perform the role with the company. He performed in three Met premieres (Peter Grimes in 1948, Khovanshchina in 1950 and Macbeth in 1959) and was chosen to sing the role of the Grand
Inquisitor in Don Carlo for the Opening Night of Rudolf Bing’s
first season as General Manager of the Met in 1950. He performed the role
of Arkel 22 times during his Met career between 1953 and 1983. His final
performance was as Sparafucile in Rigoletto on 24 January 1987. A
deeply religious man, he composed an opera based on the life of Jesus
entitled I Am the Way, which premiered in New York City in 1956,
with Hines himself in the title role.

Conductor Ernest Ansermet (11 November 1883 - 20 February 1969), was born
in Vevey, Switzerland. Originally a Mathematics Professor at the University
of Lausanne, Ansermet changed career paths and began conducting
professionally in 1912. It was while taking time from his teaching duties
and traveling to Paris in 1905 that he first heard Pelléas et Mélisande. He met Debussy for the first time in 1910 and
became a champion of his works. Between 1915 and 1923, while touring in
France with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, he founded the Orchestre de la
Suisse Romande. The orchestra would rise to prominence after the Second
World War when it signed a long-term contract with Decca Records, with
which he would record Pelléas et Mélisande twice, in 1951 and
again in 1964, this time in stereo. Ansermet had just turned 79-years old
at the time of this Met broadcast and came to it with a lifetime of
understanding of the works of Debussy. While he also conducted two
performances of Manuel de Falla’s El amor brujo and Atlántida with the forces of the Metropolitan Opera for the
inaugural week of celebrations of Lincoln Center in Philharmonic Hall (as
it was then known), five performances of Pelléas et Mélisande
would prove to be the only time he would conduct at the Met.

Cover artwork based on a photograph of Anna Moffo and George London as Mélisande and GolaudBroadcast live from the Metropolitan Opera House, New York on 29 December 1962Additional 15 minute Ansermet interview included with downloads

DEBUSSY’S “Pelléas et Mélisande” is a permanent hanger-on: never fully in
the repertory, never wholly apart from it. There always is a hard core that
thinks it quite the most wonderful opera of this century, and among that
core are many professionals and sensitive music-lovers. The public, though,
has never taken “Pelléas et Mélisande” to its heart, just as it never has
adopted Verdi’s “Falstaff.” Both operas lack the grand gesture, and are
considered, in certain quarters, hopeless—without arias, without melody.

The Metropolitan Opera has not done ‘‘Pelléas et Mésande” since the 1959-60
season. Last night it returned, with several new singers and a new
conductor. The distinguished Ernest Ansermet made his debut in this work.
He had conducted Falla’s “Atlantida” during the open-week ceremonies at
Philharmonic Hall, using Metropolitan Opera forces; but last night will go
on the books as his official debut.

Naturally he was the hero of the evening. ‘‘Pelléas et Mélisande” is a
conductor’s opera, and it demands the services of a man who is a precise
stylist and a precise technician. Despite its seeming economy of means,
“Pelléas et Mélisande” is very difficult to conduct. Textures must be
transparent; the score is a cobweb of sound, seldom arising above a mezzoforte. At that, Mr. Ansermet released his forces more than do
most conductors, and the opera last night seemed to have a little more red
blood in it than usual.

Part of this was also due to George London, who was heard in the role of
Golaud (not a new assignment for him). There is nothing unfettered about his
characterization, and in the first scene of the fourth act he almost gave
the impression he was singing Boris Godunov. He did let himself go too much
here. Elsewhere his impersonation was tortured and intense, as it should
be.

Anna Moffo was the Mélisande, singing the role for the first time at the
house. She has the physical characteristics for the role. At present,
though, her interpretation is concerned primarily with externals. Her
gestures are a little too studied, and her conception lacks the air of
mystery so needed to make Mélisande interesting. Vocally Miss Moffo sang
accurately, though with a rather hard emission of tone. She never has been
a colorist; her strength lies in a straightforward and literal translation
of the notes.

Theodor Uppman sang the role of Pelléas, as he had done the last time the
opera was around. He is an intelligent singer, and a competent actor. Thus
Pelléas was heard under good auspices, and so was the role of Geneviève,
sung for the first time by Blanche Thebom. Jerome Hines repeated his
characterization of King Arkel, singing as beautifully as ever.

New to the cast was Teresa Stratas. She undertook the role of Yniold.
Physically and vocally it was a perfect match. Miss Stratas is a diminutive
girl, and thus it caused no wrench to the imagination when she appeared as
a little boy. She sang her phrases in a piping manner, and acted like a
child without being obnoxious about it.

On the whole, then, a fine performance of the exquisite, gossamer tonal
world that makes up “Pelléas et Mélisande.” With Mr. Ansermet holding it
together with such suppleness, and with so reliable a cast, the opera could
not help but make an impact. “Impact” might not be the right word, “Pelléas
et Mélisande” being the crepuscular thing it is, but for several hours last
night the Metropolitan Opera was the realm of a magic, subdued, dim-lit
empire.

The New York Times
December 1, 1962

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